1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a self-adhesive balancing weight, which may be attached to the rim of a wheel of a vehicle for balancing the wheel.
2. Description of Relevant Art
The contact surface of self-adhesive balancing weights generally is formed so as to accurately fit to the counter surface of the wheel rim holding the weight to provide as much contact surface and thereby adhesive surface area as possible in order to ensure safe fixation. As the rim profiles of different types of wheels—coming from different wheel manufactures for instance—differ in a wide range, a great number of different balancing weights has to be kept on stock. Particularly, the counter-surface of aluminum wheel rims, to which the balancing weights have to be fixed, often are concave-convex shaped so that accurate adaptation of balancing weights is difficult.
WO 99/00609 discloses self-adhesive balancing weights the contact surfaces of which are exactly complementary to the shape of the counter-surface of the respective wheel rim so that they could not be used with wheel rims of different shape.
US 2007/0108834 A1 discloses a balancing weight body filled with mass material particles.
FR 1.309.852 discloses a balancing weight with a curved attachment section.
There is a large number of different rim geometries in the market. Furthermore, there are significant mechanical tolerances in the rims which may be in an order of 1 mm.
For reliably attaching balancing weights to a rim, there are two basic concepts. Self-adhesive balancing weights usually have a planar back surface which is designed to adhere to an at least essentially planar surface which is curved only around the rotational axis of the wheel. Accordingly, the self-adhesive balancing weights have to be bent only in one axis. The second type of balancing weights are clip-on balancing weights which are held to the rim by a spring clip. These balancing weights usually are held in an outer groove of the rim and therefore must at least roughly be adapted to the contour of the groove. Due to the large number of different grooves, at least a significant number of differently formed balancing weights is required.